Presently, most healthcare patients, as well as their physicians, find it difficult to generate an accurate health profile since critical data is often missing. That is, the individual is typically unable to recall the exact nature of his/her illness, or dates, reasons or results of specific surgical procedures as well as pathology reports. There is also a lack of accurate information concerning medications taken by an individual as well as doses and dosage schedules which may result at times in life threatening drug interactions.
There have been various attempts at providing an individual with his or her personal medical history. One such computerized system for storing medical histories is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,659,741 and 5,832,488 (both to Eberhardt). These patents are directed to computer systems and methods for programming them for storage of individual medical histories on a storage device, preferably about the size of a credit card, for adding new medical data about the individual to the device and for communicating with other computers to retrieve large data records about the individual; and for enabling a second computer to collate and sort data relating to selected medical fields from the data of such individual and from the data about other individuals transferred to the second computer.
Neither of the aforementioned is capable of utilizing the stored data records other than for retrieval purposes by another computer. They provide no useful information to the individual in helping them to improve their life expectancy or overall wellness.
The present invention overcomes the aforementioned deficiencies of conventional smart cards which simply store health and personal data for later usage. That is, the present invention utilizes a novel modeling technique which is capable of taking basic medical/health information concerning an individual and formulating an optimal life-span (i.e., life expectancy) potential for that individual. This modeling technique can in itself be altered as influenced by evolutionary discoveries, e.g., new technologies developed in medicine or other areas which impact on overall life expectancy, change in an individuals overall health condition, and/or changes in an individuals lifestyle. This unique modeling technique can therefore be used as a tool for assisting an individual in how to conduct his or her lifestyle and/or as a guide for the healthcare provider in diagnosing or treating an individual, which heretofore has not been available.
Therefore, the present invention is capable of: (a) generating accurate health profiles from birth to death; (b) giving individuals the ability to be the primary guardian of his or her medical/health data; (c) providing the ability to continuously update an individual's medical/health data for the purpose of projecting life expectancy potentials and providing the ability to alter life expectancy potentials by lifestyle adjustments; (d) utilizing the medical/health database for goal oriented and incentive driven health management; (e) utilizing the medical/health database for community-based healthcare planning; and (f) optionally, selectively using the data for national healthcare planning, i.e., pertinent information for the Center for Disease Control and the Census Bureau.
The present invention also provides many additional advantages which shall become apparent as described below.